Land Value Taxation will solve many of the 21st century's most serious social, economic and environmental problems, and promote justice, fairness and sustainability. We CAN have a world in which all can prosper.

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Pages I refer to often

Progress and Poverty, by Henry GeorgeHere are links to online editions of George's landmark book, Progress & Poverty, including audio and a number of abridgments -- the shortest is 30 words! I commend this book to your attention, if you are concerned about economic justice, poverty, sprawl, energy use, pollution, wages, housing affordability. Its observations will change how you approach all these problems. A mind-opening experience!

Books I Value

Henry George: Progress and Poverty: An inquiry into the cause of industrial depressions and of increase of want with increase of wealth ... The RemedyThis is perhaps the most important book ever written on the subjects of poverty, political economy, how we might live together in a society dedicated to the ideals Americans claim to believe are self-evident. It will provide you new lenses through which to view many of our most serious problems and how we might go about solving them: poverty, sprawl, long commutes, despoilation of the environment, housing affordability, wealth concentration, income concentration, concentration of power, low wages, etc. Read it online, or in hardcopy.

Bob Drake's abridgement of Henry George's original: Progress and Poverty: Why There Are Recessions and Poverty Amid Plenty -- And What To Do About It!This is a very readable thought-by-thought updating of Henry George's longer book, written in the language of a newsweekly. A fine way to get to know Henry George's ideas. Available online at progressandpoverty.org and http://www.henrygeorge.org/pcontents.htm

Where Else Might You Look?

Wealth and WantThe URL comes from the subtitle to Progress & Poverty -- and the goal is widely shared prosperity in the 21st century. How do we get there from here? A roadmap and a reference source.

Reforming the Property Tax for the Common GoodI'm a tax reform activist who seeks to promote fairness and reduce poverty. Let's start with the enabling legislation and state requirements for the property tax. There are opportunities for great good!

Notes

73 posts categorized "toll-takers"

September 28, 2013

One might be led to ask, how many is enough, and how we might go about encouraging our best and brightest into careers that serve others instead of rent-seeking. Two generations ago, many became doctors, engineers and teachers.

What changes in public policy will reduce the returns now funneled so generously to the rent-seekers, leaving more for the folks who labor in the productive sectors of the economy?

Why do we pay so little attention to rent-seeking?

Why is rent-seeking taught to our MBAs, but the impacts of rent-seeking not taught to our liberal arts, social sciences, political science, public policy students?

D'ya think that the rent-seekers might really really like it this way??

Too many of the our brightest people may be choosing careers in finance,
undertaking economically and socially useless — and even harmful —
activities, Robert Shiller, a Yale University economics professor,
writes in an article for Project Syndicate.

A
survey of elite U.S. universities showed that 25 percent of Harvard
graduating seniors, 24 percent of Yale graduating seniors and 46 percent
of Princeton graduating seniors were going into financial services in
2006, notes Shiller, co-creator of the Case-Shiller home price index.

While those proportions have fallen more recently, he explains that might only be a temporary effect of the financial crisis.And
more are going into speculative fields like investment banking rather
than traditional finance such as lending, he says, citing a study by
Thomas Philippon of the Stern School of Business, New York University
and Ariell Reshef of the University of Virginia.

We
need some traders and speculators, Shiller concedes, as they provide
some useful service — sorting through information about businesses and
trying to judge their real worth.

"But these people's activities
also impose costs on the rest of us," he explains. Much of their
speculation and deal making is "pure rent-seeking."

"In
other words, it is wasteful activity that achieves nothing more than
enabling the collection of rents on items that might otherwise be free."

Those
working in speculative finance fields are like a feudal lord installing
a chain across a river to charge fees on passing boats, he argues.
Making no improvements to the river, the lord does nothing productive
and helps no one but himself. Few people will use the river if enough
lords put chains across it to collect fees.

Those
working in speculative fields, he says, "skim the best business deals,
creating a 'negative externality' on those who are not party to them."

For example, they can reject bad assets, such as subprime mortgage securities, offloading them to less knowledgeable investors.

The
repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which blocked commercial banks from
investment banking, allowed bankers to act more and more like those
feudal lords collecting fees.

"In fact, the main advantages of
the original Glass-Steagall Act," he says, "may have been more
sociological than technical, changing the business culture and
environment in subtle ways. By keeping the deal-making business
separate, banks may have focused more on their traditional core
business."

A paper by economists at Columbia University and Princeton published on the Social Science Research Network website
showed that over-the-counter (OTC) traders allowed informed dealers to
extract excessive rents and to undermine organized exchanges by
"cream-skimming" the best deals.

"The
informational rents in OTC markets in turn attract too much talent to
the financial industry, which would be more efficiently deployed as
real-sector entrepreneurs," the paper asserts.

Plus, OTC dealers'
rents tend to increase "as there are more informed dealers, because the
greater cream-skimming by dealers worsens the terms entrepreneurs can
get for their assets on the organized exchange, and therefore their
bargaining power on OTC markets."

March 06, 2013

I AM writing these pages on the shore of Long
Island, where the Bay of New York contracts to what is
called the Narrows, nearly opposite the point where our
legalized robbers, the Custom-House officers, board incoming
steamers to ask strangers to take their first American
swear, and where, if false oaths really colored the
atmosphere the air would be bluer than is the sky on this
gracious day. I turn from my writing-machine to the window,
and drink in, with a pleasure that never seems to pall, the
glorious panorama.

"What do you see?" If in ordinary talk I were asked
this, I should of course say, "I see land and water and sky,
ships and houses, and light clouds, and the sun drawing to
its setting over the low green hills of Staten Island and
illuminating all."

But if the question refer to the terms of political economy,
I should say, "I see land and wealth." Land, which is the
natural factor of production; and wealth, which is the
natural factor so changed by the exertion of the human
factor, labor, as to fit it for the satisfaction of human
desires. For water and clouds, sky and sun, and the stars
that will appear when the sun is sunk, are, in the
terminology of political economy, as much land as is the dry
surface of the earth to which we narrow the meaning of the
word in ordinary talk. And the window through which I look;
the flowers in the garden; the planted trees of the orchard;
the cow that is browsing beneath them; the Shore Road under
the window; the vessels that lie at anchor near the bank,
and the little pier that juts out from it; the
trans-Atlantic liner steaming through the channel; the
crowded pleasure-steamers passing by; the puffing tug with
its line of mud-scows; the fort and dwellings on the
opposite side of the Narrows; the lighthouse that will soon
begin to cast its far-gleaming eye from Sandy Hook; the big
wooden elephant of Coney Island; and the graceful sweep of
the Brooklyn Bridge, that may be discovered from a little
higher up; all alike fall into the economic term wealth —
land modified by labor so as to afford satisfaction to human
desires. All in this panorama that was before man came here,
and would remain were he to go, belongs to the economic
category land; while all that has been produced by labor
belongs to the economic category wealth, so long as it
retains its quality of ministering to human desire.

But on the hither shore, in view from the window, is a
little rectangular piece of dry surface, evidently reclaimed
from the line of water by filling in with rocks and earth.
What is that? In ordinary speech it is land, as
distinguished from water, and I should intelligibly indicate
its origin by speaking of it as "made land." But in the
categories of political economy there is no place for such a
term as "made land." For the term land refers only and
exclusively to productive powers derived wholly from nature
and not at all from industry, and whatever is, and in so far
as it is, derived from land by the exertion
of labor, is wealth. This bit of dry surface
raised above the level of the water by filling in stones and
soil, is, in the economic category, not land but wealth. It
has land below it and around it, and the material of which
it is composed has been drawn from land; but in itself it
is, in the proper speech of political economy, wealth; just
as truly as the ships I behold are not land but wealth,
though they too have land below them and around them and are
composed of material drawn from land.

February 09, 2013

I wonder if Morgan the Pirate,
When plunder had glutted his heart,
Gave part of the junk from his ships he had sunk
To help some Museum of Art;
If he gave up the role of "collector of toll" And became a Collector of Art?

I wonder if Genghis the Butcher, When he'd trampled down nations like grass.
Retired with his share when he'd lost all his hair, And started a Sunday school class;
If he turned his past under and used half his plunder In running a Sunday school class?

I wonder if Roger the Rover,
When millions in looting he made,
Built libraries grand on the jolly mainland
To honor Success and "free trade;"
If he founded a college of natural knowledge Where Pirates could study their trade?

I wonder, I wonder, I wonder,
If Pirates were ever the same,
Ever trying to lend a respectable trend
To the jaunty old buccaneer game;
Or is it because of our Piracy Laws That philanthropists enter the game?

—Wallace Irwin, in Life. -- reprinted in The Painter and Decorator, a union journal, 1907

January 25, 2013

Quite belatedly, I found an interesting article on Taxi Medallions and Rent-Seeking. I particularly like the juxtaposition of the sidebar and the article's primary content; read the sidebar first.

Why did I include in the "categories" for this post "all benefits go to the landholder"? Because a taxi medallion is a privilege, which, in classical economics, is another form of "land." Read the sidebar!

There is an easy solution: auction off those privileges for limited periods of time. Lather, rinse, repeat!

The sidebar quotes Adam Smith "... the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce," which leads me to think about Henry George's axiom that

"The fundamental principle of human action — the law that is to political economy what the law of gravitation is to physics — is that men seek to gratify their desires with the least exertion." [Progress & Poverty Book III, Chapter 6 — The Laws of Distribution: Wages and the Law of Wages]

One quote from the body of the article:

Studies of economic losses due to rent-seeking and the resulting
monopolies have produced figures ranging from 3 to 12 percentage points
of national output for the US.

and another:

All of these are possible reasons why the city of Milwaukee might want
to limit the number of cab permits, but they do not imply that the
existing owners must have a permanent right to them.

The city could simply auction 321 licences every year or two and capture
all of the economic rents for itself. Another argument is that a permit
acts as a pension for drivers that would otherwise not have a business
they could sell on retirement. But that is true only for the first,
lucky generation of owners.

I should have thought the question about raising rents had been,
to your own knowledge, enough answered by me. I have in several, if
not in many places, declared the entire system of rent-paying to be
an abomination and wickedness of the foulest kind, and have only
ceased insisting on that fact of late years, because I would not be
counted among the promoters of mob violence. The future, not only of
England, but of Christendom, must issue in abolition of rents, but
whether with confusion or slaughter, or by action of noble and
resolute men in the rising generation of England and her colonies,
remains to be decided. I fear the worst, and that soon.

January 24, 2013

I'm skimming Louis Post's book "Social Service" (1909) and came across a couple of elegant paragraphs about Laissez faire.

Doesn't unrestricted competition mean to let everybody alone? That
depends upon what you mean by letting alone. It does not mean to let
everybody or anybody alone to interfere with production, with
rendering
service, with industry. Such interferences, whether by government or
by
highwaymen, are precisely what ought to be stopped in the interest
of
unrestricted competition. Unrestricted competition does mean that
everybody should be let alone in production, in trade, in service,
in
usefulness to his fellows, in making the world better and richer,
and
in securing a fair distribution of service among those who render
service.

Truly enough, "laissez faire" is the word — "let alone," that is the
watchword of competition. But it isn't all of it. As the old
democratic
economists of France put it — those preceptors of Adam Smith — it
was
"laissez faire, laissez aller." Now, how would you translate that,
Doctor? Don't you think that George's free translation of "a fair
field
and no favor" will do? Or we might make it "a square deal and no
odds,"
or best of all, maybe, "equal rights and no privileges."

There is no competition in the policy of "let alone," unless you
abolish privileges. But with equal rights and no privileges, can you
imagine anything fairer or squarer or juster in industry, in trade,
in
social service, than the policy of "let alone"? This doesn't mean a
"struggle for existence and survival of the fittest" in the sense of
survival of the strong at the expense of the weak, nor even of
survival
of the more productive at the expense of the less productive. It
means
fair distribution in proportion to production. It means that he who
renders the most and the best service in his specialty shall get the
most and the best service from other specializers, while those who
render the least and the poorest shall nevertheless get the
equivalent
of what they do render. And it leaves the decision to those who in
equal freedom make the deal for the service.

Competition is the natural regulator of the law of the line of least
resistance. Without such regulation that law might stimulate the
strongest — not the strongest in rendering service, but the
strongest
in
extorting service — to get service without giving an equivalent
service
of his own. There is your savage "tooth and claw" condition, Doctor.
But under free competition this would be impossible, for free
competition restrains the individual desires of each by the
opposition
of the individual desires of others. In other words, competition
tends
to produce an equilibrium of the self-serving impulse at the most
useful level of social service.

It is a word of confusing connotations, this word "competition," as
are
all living words; and it may not be the best word for conveying my
idea. But I can't manufacture words, Doctor. All I can do is to make
unto myself a definition, and always to use my word in that sense;
and
all I can ask you to do is to adopt my definitions when you try to
understand my discourse.

Though competition may not be quite synonymous with natural
co-operation, it is closely related to it, and in such a manner as
to
justify me, I think, in characterizing it as the life principle of
natural co-operation.

Monopoly, on the other hand, whether its purpose be malevolent or
benevolent, is the death principle of natural co-operation.

So it seems to me that you will grasp the significance of
competition
best by contrasting it with monopoly.

To sum it all up, there are only two ways of regulating co-operative
service, that social service which springs from individual desires
for
selfservice. One way is by monopoly; the other is by free
competition.
Monopoly is pathological, and socially destructive; competition is
natural, and socially creative.

Louis F. Post was editor of Henry George's weekly newspaper, The Standard, for a year or so, and went on to edit The Public for a number of years, and then became an Assistant Secretary of Labor in Woodrow Wilson's administration.

George Monbiot has an excellent article on tax in the Guardian this morning. At its core is an argument for land value taxation, which he explains has long had powerful support. As he puts it:

In 1909 a dangerous subversive explained the issue thus. “Roads are made, streets are made, services are improved, electric light turns night into day, water is brought from reservoirs a hundred miles off in the mountains -– and all the while the landlord sits still. Every one of those improvements is effected by the labour and cost of other people and the taxpayers. To not one of those improvements does the land monopolist, as a land monopolist, contribute, and yet by every one of them the value of his land is enhanced. He renders no service to the community, he contributes nothing to the general welfare, he contributes nothing to the process from which his own enrichment is derived … the unearned increment on the land is reaped by the land monopolist in exact proportion, not to the service, but to the disservice done.”

Who was this firebrand? Winston Churchill. As Churchill, Adam Smith and many others have pointed out, those who own the land skim wealth from everyone else, without exertion or enterprise. They “levy a toll upon all other forms of wealth and every form of industry”. A land value tax would recoup this toll.

[W]hat’s wrong with the argument the Terry Leahys and the Bob Diamonds make for their extreme wealth? Look, the line runs, we work bloody hard for it; we’re worth it. And it’s true: unlike previous generations of the ultra-wealthy, many of the modern super-rich work for a living, in running major businesses or in finance (although the Davos guestlist still includes plenty of sheikhs and royals). But that doesn’t mean they truly earn the millions they claim.

Take a look at who’s in the Davos set. Last spring, two American academics, Jon Bakija and Brad Helm, and a US Treasury official, Adam Cole, published the most comprehensive analysis yet of the richest 0.1% earners, based on tax returns. Of these top dogs, nearly two in three were top corporate executives and bankers. And the story in both those professions has not been of brilliant returns to shareholders or vast improvements for society, but of wealth extraction and lobbying politicians, Davos-style. In particular, the tale of modern high-finance is of generating transactions, whether in corporate mergers or sub-prime mortgages and then skimming off some of the cash.

That’s extracting rent in exactly the same way that the property owner does. Economically the logic is the same. This is all unearned income, and we should not be granting it favours which increase the divisions and stresses in society; we should be taxing it.

That means we need land value taxation for sure, but we need progressive income taxation, capital gains tax at the same rate as income tax and enforceable corporation tax too if these rents are to be collected. And then there’s the need for reform of inheritance tax.

I really must get round to writing the Joy of Tax. It is next on my list.

The skivers and shirkers are the economic rent extractors

"This is where the debate about workers and shirkers, strivers and skivers should have led. The skivers and shirkers sucking the money out of your pockets are not the recipients of social security demonised by the Daily Mail and the Conservative party, the overwhelming majority of whom are honest claimants. We are being parasitised from above, not below, and the tax system should reflect this."

Although this is a UK-focused story, it has international relevance. As we've noted several times before, Land Value Tax is an essential element of any good tax mix. It's progressive, it doesn't damage productivity, and it curbs the abusive practice of economic rent extraction. The article has a particular opinion:

"It's not really a tax. It's a return to the public of the benefits we have donated to the landlords. When land rises in value, the government and the people deliver a great unearned gift to those who happen to own it."

January 13, 2013

Here are the opening paragraphs of a recent article about the complexities of Ground Lease contracts. I commend the entire article to your attention. It helps flesh out why and how the entire FIRE sector -- Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (as well as their attorneys) -- is receiving such a large share of the profits produced by the productive sectors of the economy. The owner of land, and the entities which lend on land, and insure the buildings and the revenue flow, all reap significant shares of what the tenants labor to create. Modern sharecropping. And the recipients of the ground rent get to parade as self-made men, people of awesome foresight and wisdom -- and even philanthropists (think Brooke Astor, the Fishers, and others in your own community) when they donate a small share back to a charity! As you read this, think both of Manhattan land and of land in your community's central business district, and along its major roads. (Location, location, location!)

If one wonders why (true) small business struggles, one might consider the complexity and expense of their ground leases, and contrast that with the Georgist alternative: that one's taxes would be simply the current rental value of the land, while the value of the building remains one's private property, not subject to taxation or going pouf! at the end of a ground lease.

The land lord is "supplying" something he didn't create. We ought to ease him out. Land value taxation is the obvious tool for reducing, and -- slowly or not -- eliminating, his "take" on those who do create. Think what it would mean if working people had that spending power, instead of the lords of the land.

All that land rent could be used to fund our community's needs, instead of lining the pockets of a few very "lucky" -- privileged -- duckies. (The analogies to chattel slavery are not a long stretch, once one starts to think about it. We should all own ourselves, and reap the fruits of our own labors.)

A lease is a lease is a lease – or so you may think. Yes, real property leases grant an estate in land to a tenant for a period of time. And yes, the tenant pays for that right of possession. But the action in a lease isn’t in the conveyance provisions; it’s in the contract provisions. Multiply out the rent and other annual monetary obligations by the length of the lease term (in years), and you’ll see that it might be (and often is) a big dollar contract. Even more important, unlike the vast majority of contracts whose obligations are satisfied in days or weeks, a lease contract goes unfulfilled for 50, 75, “99,” and even 500 years. That takes it beyond the life of the parties involved in its creation, and the future brings surprises. Neither Nostradamus nor Jules Verne got everything right.

Why a Ground Lease?

If a tenant has to build its own building (as is often the case), and has all of the burdens of ownership, why would it lease a property knowing that at the end of the lease term it has nothing left to show for its money and efforts? There are a number of common reasons, principal among them is that the owner won’t sell the land and the tenant has no alternative.

Real property often carries a long term unrealized gain, waiting to be taxed upon its sale.

Not every landowner is interested in making further active real property investments. This makes a like kind exchange unappealing.

Ground leasing the same land keeps ownership in the family. At the owner’s death, because of the current estate tax “stepped up basis” arrangement, the built in gain may never be taxed.

January 12, 2013

The hospitals (of England) are full of the ancient. . . . The
almshouses are filled with old laborers. Many there are who get
their living with bearing burdens, but more are fain to burden the
land with their whole bodies. Neither come these straits upon men
always through intemperance, ill-husbandry, indiscretion, etc.; but
even the most wise, sober and discreet men go often to the wall when
they have done their best. . . The rent-taker lives on the sweet
morsels, but the rent-payer eats a dry crust often with watery eyes.

—Robert Cushman, Plymouth, 1621, in Young's "Chronicles of the
Pilgrims."

January 07, 2013

An Irish landlord, writing to the London Times, called particular attention to the fact
that, in case all the landlords should be expelled, the whole of
Ireland, outside of the large towns, would be left without a single
person whose annual income would exceed $1,500. To the wealthy
landlord who owns the Times,
this appalling fact seems to afford such conclusive proof of the
desolation and misery which would follow home rule that he deems it
superfluous to add a word of comment. He considers it quite enough
to say that no such state of things exists in any civilised country.
That it should be eventually brought about in Ireland, he evidently
believes, must be considered by every sane man as one of the most
frightful disasters which could befall the human race.

I am writing in Germany, the country from which have proceeded the
most important additions to the intellectual wealth of the world
during the last fifty years. The man who knows nothing of the
contributions made to history, to theology, to science, whether
abstract or applied, by German students, knows practically nothing
at all. What have been the income of the men who have thus enriched
the world! Rarely so much as $1,500; generally not half that amount.
Some of the world-famous German scholars accomplished their great
achievements on an income of less than $600 a year.

New England developed a marvelous degree of intellectual activity in
the colonial period of our history, though confined within a narrow
circle. But that was a period of small incomes and very little
accumulated wealth; nor did the few wealthy men contribute anything
of importance to the intellectual or moral development of the
people. What have the wealthy Irish landlords done for the
development of the Irish people in religion, morality or intellect?
What contribution has any wealthy Irish landlord ever made to
literature, science, art or high thought of any kind? What benefit
have these men of wealth conferred upon any part of the world in any
direction? They have just held a solemn meeting to answer these
questions, and their own testimony affords the best evidence against
them. They claim to have advised their tenants to improve their
stock, to introduce better methods of cultivation and to qualify
themselves generally to pay higher rents, while they themselves have
set excellent examples to their inferiors by taking good care of
themselves.

Many years ago a practical joker inserted an advertisement in a
daily paper to the following effect: "Wanted, by a young gentleman
of good birth and breeding, board in a respectable family, where his
Christian example would be considered sufficient compensation for
his board." The Irish landlords do not advertise, but they get
precisely that for which the young man advertised in vain. Their
Christian example, however, has been chiefly directed toward
hunting, horse racing and hard drinking. Certainly, down to a period
less than fifty years ago, all accounts of Ireland agreed in this;
and except that the drinking is conducted with more moderation,
there seems no reason to believe that there has been any change.

January 06, 2013

First Fisherman: Why, as men do a land. The great ones eat up the
little ones. I can compare our rich misers to nothing so fitly as to
a whale , 'a plays and tumbles, driving the poor fry before him, and
at last devours them all at a mouthful; such whales have I heard on
o' the land, who never leave gaping till they have swallowed the
whole parish, church, steeple, bells and all. . . .

Third Fisherman: If the good King Simonides were of my mind, he
would purge the land of these drones that rob the bee of her honey.

December 19, 2012

I stumbled across an excerpt from this in The American Cooperator, and when I couldn't find the material in any of George's other books, I went looking for the source, an 1887 book with chapters by 16 authors.

THE HISTORY, PURPOSE AND POSSIBILITIES OF LABOR ORGANIZATIONS IN EUROPE AND AMERICA; GUILDS, TRADES- UNIONS, AND KNIGHTS OF LABOR; WAGES AND PROFITS; HOURS OF LABOR; FUNCTIONS OF CAPITAL; CHINESE LABOR: COMPETITION; ARBITRATION; PROFIT-SHARING AND CO-OPERATION; PRINCIPLES OF THE KNIGHTS OF LABOR; MORAL AND EDUCATIONAL AS- PECTS OF THE LABOR QUESTION.

EDITED BY GEORGE E. McNEILL,
First Deputy of Mass. Bureau of Statistics of Labor; Sec.-Treas. of D. A. 30, Knights of Labor.

MAGNITUDE OF THE QUESTION — FIRST PRINCIPLES — THE
LAND-OWNER THE ABSOLUTE MASTER OF MEN WHO MUST LIVE ON HIS LAND — THE
ORDER OF NATURE INVERTED — EQUAL RIGHTS TO THE USE OF THE EARTH —
SELFISHNESS, THE EVIL GENIUS OF MAN — THE IRISH PEOPLE FORCED TO BEG
PERMISSION TO TILL THE SOIL — APPROPRIATION OF THE CHURCH-LANDS — LAND
IN ITSELF HAS NO VALUE — THE GREAT CAUSE OF THE UNEQUAL DISTRIBUTION OF
WEALTH — NO HOPE FOR THE LABORER, SO LONG AS PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND
EXISTS — NOTHING MYSTERIOUS ABOUT THE LABOR QUESTION — THE DIFFICULTY IN
FINDING EMPLOYMENT — NATURE OFFERS FREELY TO LABOR — NATURAL MEANS OF
EMPLOYMENT MONOPOLIZED — SPECULATION IN THE BOUNTIES OF NATURE.

BENEATH all the great social questions of our time lies one of primary
and universal importance, the question of the rights of men to the use
of the earth.

The magnitude of the pecuniary interests involved, the fact that the
influential classes in all communities where private property in land
exists are interested in its maintenance, lead to a disposition to
ignore or belittle the land question: but it is impossible to give any
satisfactory explanation of the most important social phenomena without
reference to it; and the growing unrest of the masses of all civilized
countries, under conditions which they feel to be galling and unjust,
must at length lead them, as the only way of securing the rights of
labor, to turn to the land question.

To see that the land question does involve the problem of the equitable
distribution of wealth; that it lies at the root of all the vexed social
questions of our time, and is, indeed, but another name for the great
labor question in all its phases, it is only needful to revert to first
principles, and to consider the relations between men and the planet
they inhabit.

We find ourselves on the surface of a sphere, circling through
immeasurable space. Beneath our feet, the diameter of the planet extends
for eight thousand miles; above our heads night reveals countless
points of light, which science tells us are suns, that blaze billions of
miles away. In this inconceivably vast universe, we are confined to the
surface of our sphere, as the mariner in mid-ocean is confined to the
deck of his ship. We are limited to that line where the exterior of the
planet meets the atmospheric envelope that surrounds it. We may look
beyond, but cannot pass. We are not denizens of one element, like the
fish; but while our bodies must be upheld by one element, they must be
laved in another. We live on the earth, and in the air. In the search
for minerals men are able to descend for a few thousand feet into the
earth's crust, provided communication with the surface be kept open, and
air thus supplied; and in balloons men have ascended to like distances
above the surface; but on a globe of thirty-five feet diameter, this
range would be represented by the thickness of a sheet of paper. And
though it is thus possible for man to ascend for a few thousand feet
above the surface, or to descend for a few thousand feet below it, it is
only on the surface of the earth that he can habitually live and supply
his wants; nor can he do this on all parts of the surface of the globe,
but only on that smaller part, which we call land, as distinguished
from the water, while considerable parts even of the land are
uninhabitable by him.

By constructing vessels of materials obtained from land, and
provisioning them with the produce of land, it is true that man is able
to traverse the fluid-surface of the globe; yet he is none the less
dependent upon land. If the land of the globe were again to be
submerged, human life could not long be maintained on the best-appointed
ships.

Man, in short, is a land-animal. Physically considered, he is as much a
product of land as is the tree. His body, composed of materials drawn
from land, can only be maintained by nutriment furnished by land; and
all the processes by which he secures food, clothing and shelter consist
but in the working up of land or the products of land. Labor is
possible only on condition of access to land, and all human production
is but the union of land and labor, the transportation or transformation
of previously existing matter into places or forms suited to the
satisfaction of man's needs.

Land, being thus indispensable to man, the most important of social
adjustments is that which fixes the relations between men with regard to
that element. Where all are accorded equal rights to the use of the
earth, no one needs ask another to give him employment, and no one can
stand in fear of being deprived of the opportunity to make, a living. In
such a community, there could be no "labor question." There could be
neither degrading poverty nor demoralizing wealth. And the personal
independence arising from such a condition of equality, in respect to
the ability to get a living, must give character to all social and
political institutions.

On the other hand, inequality of privilege in the use of the earth must
beget inequality of wealth and power, must divide men into those who can
command and those who are forced to serve. The rewards which nature
yields to labor no longer go to the laborers in proportion to industry
and skill; but a privileged class are enabled to live without labor by
compelling a disinherited class to give up some part of their earnings
for permission to live and work. Thus the order of nature is inverted,
those who do no work become rich, and "workingman" becomes synonymous,
with "poor man." Material progress tends to monstrous wealth on one
side, and abject poverty on the other; and society is differentiated
into masters and servants, rulers and ruled.

If one man were permitted to claim the land of the world as his
individual property, he would be the absolute master of all humanity.
All the rest of mankind could live only by his permission, and under
such conditions as he chose to prescribe. So, if one man be permitted to
treat as his own the land of any country, he becomes the absolute
sovereign of its people. Or, if the land of a country be made the
property of a class, a ruling aristocracy is created, who soon begin to
regard themselves, and to be regarded, as of nobler blood and superior
rights. That "God will think twice before he damns people of quality,"
is the natural feeling of those who are taught to believe that the land
on which all must live is legitimately their private property.

December 16, 2012

"Of course the fact that a chief or land-owner has bought and paid
for a particular privilege or species of taboo, or has inherited
from his fathers, doesn't give him in any moral claim to it. The
question is, Is the claim in itself right and reasonable? for a
wrong is only all the more a wrong for having been long and
persistently exercised."

November 28, 2012

He may, and often he does, engross the first necessity of labor,
land, and neither use it himself or allow anyone else to use it, and
though it is clear that . . . he is injuring the community, the law
is sternly on his side.

November 19, 2012

But if Egyptian civilization had its victims, it had also its
favorites. . . . There stood . . . that upper class . .
. owners of a large portion of the soil, and so possessed of
hereditary wealth, one which seemed born to enjoy existence and
"consume the fruits" of other men's toil and industry.

November 15, 2012

Pigou, a key bridge figure in the history of his field, was one of the earliest classical economists to notice that markets do not always produce the best possible social outcomes. The pollution generated by a factory imposes costs on those who live downstream or in the path of its airborne emissions. The risks assumed by banks leading up to the recent financial crisis imposed costs on just about everybody. Market transactions often generate what economists call “externalities” — side effects, sometimes positive but often negative, that affect people who do not participate in the transaction.

Pigou, having recognized the problem, was the first to propose a solution. Society should tax the negative externalities and subsidize the positive ones. This simple notion — if you want less of something, tax it — is why his ideas periodically bubble up in the service of combating a recognizable cost to society, like pollution. We think that his approach offers an answer to another great problem of our time: inequality.

Does the extreme degree of inequality in America today really create, as Pigou would put it, negative externalities? Does the fact that hedge-fund manager Mr. Jones rakes in 100 or 1,000 times what office manager Mrs. Smith earns impose costs on everybody else? Plenty of Americans think not. Defenders of our skewed income distribution point out that a free-enterprise system requires some inequality. Unequal rewards give people an incentive to work hard and acquire new skills. They encourage inventors to invent, entrepreneurs to start companies, investors to take risks. It’s fine in this view that some people get astronomically rich. As Mitt Romney likes to say, “I’m not going to apologize for being successful.”

On the other side, many of us have a gut feeling that inequality has gone too far. Our times are reminiscent of the Gilded Age’s worst excesses. Hence the popularity of the Occupy Wall Street movement’s slogan, “We are the 99 percent.”

LVTfan here: Wouldn't it be better to prevent the inequality by such measures as treating the natural creation as our common treasure, instead of permitting its privatization and then taxing back what is taken? Treating the natural creation, and that which the community creates by its presence and its investment in public goods -- schools, roads, libraries, etc. -- as our COMMON treasure would create equal opportunity for all, a much better idea than permitting some to capture it and then taxing some of their booty back after the fact. When we let some reap what others sow, and then take back a share after the fact, we're still permitting them to reap which deprives the sowers of that right. Whether it be nature doing the sowing, or the community as a whole, no good can come of permitting the privatization of that. Henry George, in "Progress and Poverty" and "Social Problems" showed the logical, efficient, just way to do better.

StarWatch investigation: State paid twice what some I-69 land was worth
To secure path for I-69, INDOT offered $7M for property appraised at $3.34MWritten by Ryan Sabalow and Tim Evans | 7:47 PM, Nov 10, 2012

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- In 2006, Barry Elkins paid $850,000 for about 200
acres in Monroe County owned by former Indiana University basketball
coach Bob Knight.

$4,250 per acre

Elkins told a local newspaper he had no plans to develop the land. He
said he also was quite aware state officials planned to acquire at least
some of the property for the new I-69 freeway project.

Nonetheless, Elkins told a reporter: "It's a heck of a piece of ground."

Turns out, it produced a heck of a profit, too.

In July, state highway officials paid Elkins $2.41 million for an
easement covering 140 of the 200 acres. That's almost four times the
$658,800 that state appraisers said the easement was worth.

$17,214 per acre for the 140 acres.
$658,800 is $4,705 per acre.
The $2.41 million represents a profit of $1.56 million since 2006, still
leaves the owner with 60 acres with no easement and 140 acres with an
easement. The $1.56 million profit in 6 years on an $850,000 investment
is 84%! Quite a return! For what effort?

What did society get in return?

...
According to I-69 cost estimates INDOT provided this summer, $162.6
million in state and federal funds were spent on right-of-way purchases
along the new stretch of freeway.

...

He said the property payments also haven't caused the project to go over
budget. He said the I-69 project is 25 percent under budget estimates.
Officials this summer pegged the cost of the Evansville-to-Bloomington
project at $1.5 billion.

...

The land Elkins bought from Knight wasn't the only Monroe County
property along I-69's path that he sold to the state for far more than
its fair market value. He and two co-owners also got $348,600 for a
27-acre property appraised at $194,625; and $795,956 for 58 acres
appraised at $278,295.

As for the former Knight property, the state purchased the easement to
create an "environmental mitigation site" to make up for damage to
forests, wetlands, wildlife habitat and other natural resources caused
by the new freeway.

After the $2.41 million payday -- which was nearly three times the
amount Elkins paid Knight for the entire 200 acres -- Elkins still owns
the picturesque expanse of undeveloped pasture and woods about eight
miles southwest of Bloomington.

The easement forbids any development on 140 acres of the land but allows
Elkins to use it for "low-impact" recreational activities such as
hiking, photography and hunting.

And he doesn't have to pay property taxes.

One might reasonably ask what valuation Elkins was paying property taxes on before the transactions.

One might reasonably ask how much the labor costs on this project were -- what men and women got paid for their hours of labor put into building the highway, and then compare that to Mr. Elkins' and others' receipts as passive landholders!! Quite amazing that we treat the "rights" of landholders as more sacred than we make the rights of the community or of those who work.

One might reasonably wonder how soon the communities along the route of this new highway will revalue their land, and whether the communities will collect more from those whose land benefited from the presence of this highway (and less from those whose properties were in reality negatively impacted, should that be the case). In general, the aggregate benefits will far exceed the aggregate negative impacts, and would likely be enough to pay all the costs of the construction.

Mr. Elkins' free lunch did not come out of thin air. And likely, his heirs will continue to enjoy the benefit of it.

THIS is how wealth concentrates. This is why we are forced into taxing wages, and sales, and other things we have no business taxing!

November 13, 2012

As you read this, recall that a single acre of urban land can be worth $250,000,000 or more -- over 23,000 times what the recently-doubled farmland described in this article sold for!! Also, it seems worthwhile to point out that 160 acres (one quarter of a square mile), at $10,700 each, works out to $1.7 million -- currently well below the threshold for the federal estate tax!

Consider, too, what it is that the land speculator brings to the process of production, and what he is rightly entitled to in a fair and just society, and what society is entitled to, and what the workers -- the farmer and his employees -- are entitled to, and what the capitalist -- the fellow who pays for the buildings and equipment -- is entitled to. Seems like the land speculator is making out awfully -- awefully! -- well but isn't producing or creating anything!! Why do we do things this way? Did the absentee landlord deserve a share of the crop the farmer created? If the farmer has to pay rent to someone, shouldn't it be the community? Wouldn't it be better if America's investors were motivated to put their funds into better equipment (capital) or employing people (labor)?

November 8, 2012

Howard Audsley has been driving through Missouri for the past 30 years to assess the value of farmland. Barreling down the flat roads of Saline County on a recent day, he stopped his truck at a 160-acre tract of newly tilled black land. The land sold in February for $10,700 per acre, double what it would have gone for five years ago.

Heading out into the field, Audsley picked up a clod of the dirt that makes this pocket of land some of the priciest in the state.

"This is a very loamy, very productive, but loamy soil," Audsley said. "A high-clay soil will just be like a rock and that's the difference between the ... soils. And the farmers know this and the investors know this. That's why they pay for it what they do."

A Steep Surge In Prices

It's
not just the value of Missouri cropland that's rising. Corn Belt
farmland prices from Iowa to Illinois and Nebraska to Kansas have been
sky-high lately, boosted by $8-a-bushel corn.

"We
paid about $3.3 million for [about 650 acres] in Southeast Illinois in
2009," said Diggle, who is the CEO of Singapore-based Vulpes Investment
Management. The company handles $250 million of investor money, about 15
percent of which is in farmland.The
high commodity prices have helped encourage investors like Steve
Diggle, who have no connection to farming, to compete for their very own
acreage in the Heartland.

"This
year we sold it at auction and we got $5.1 million," he said, referring
to the Illinois farmland. "That's 55 percent higher than we paid. Plus
we got two yields — one of 3.5 percent and one of 5 percent. So, you
know, as an investment, that's 63 percent over three years. [It] is
great and we're extremely happy with it."

Diggle
says his firm also purchased a 1,400-acre tract in Illinois two years
ago. The company plans to hold on to it to make money through cash rents
and land appreciation.

"The
value of your land may go up or down. But as long as bond prices remain
where they are, it's very hard to see how we'll have a sustained bear
market for agriculture," Diggle said. By comparison, he said, the
extremely low returns in the bond market are "just so inferior."

A Safer Investment

You don't have to be a billionaire to invest in farmland.

Physics
professor Andy Trupin, who lives in Delray Beach, Fla., bought a
155-acre tract of farmland in Lebo, Kan., two years ago because it
looked like it would make him more money than gold or the stock market.
He also owns another tract that's primarily pastureland.

"Farmland
seemed like a much safer vehicle to get an income stream even though
... it's not a high-income stream. At least it's more than you would get
on Treasuries at any duration," Trupin said. "And at the same time,
[farmland offers] price appreciation or to at least [holds] its value in
the event of an inflation period."

The
investment has paid off so far, Trupin said. He rented out the land to a
local farmer who grows corn, soybeans and wheat. Even the brutal
drought failed to knock down the investment.

"Amazingly
we managed to get 20 bushels to the acre of corn even though the place
was as dry as Las Vegas last year," Trupin said. "I'm willing to let the
income from this thing fluctuate. In bad years, it's a slight loss —
maybe a couple of thousand on the year — and in good years, you gain up
to $10,000 on it."

Trupin
found the land online and got help purchasing it by Realty Executives
of Kansas City. The company says 90 percent of its new customers are
investors like Trupin, and it holds seminars for investors that walk
them through the process of evaluating and buying farmland and how to
find local farmers to rent the land.

"There's
probably a higher percentage now of people who are strictly investors,
stock market people, money-market-type investors, and ... they're buying
all types of land," said Dale Hermreck, a broker for Realty Executives
who says he sold $21 million worth of farmland in Kansas last year.

"We
have a lot of outside interest from Texas, Chicago, New York," Hermreck
said. "I get calls and inquiries all over the United States."

The Specter Of A Bubble

But
to University of Missouri agriculture economist Ron Plain all of this
sounds a bit like the housing bubble burst of 2006. He is concerned a
similar bubble could be happening in farmland.

"You
get several years going up faster than that long-term trend of 6
percent [annual increases] and you're then in a situation where you're
sort of due for a correction," Plain said. "And the way you correct is
pull those land values down — or 'pop the bubble' ... and so there's
concern about that and it's kind of reasonable to worry."

Plain
said that with mortgage rates at their lowest in 60 years, it's
reasonable to expect the cost of borrowing to go up eventually. And if
crop prices retreat from record highs, he said, that means "less income
per acre and therefore less ability to pay for farmland."

Should
a bubble burst, farmland might be harder to sell, especially compared
with other more liquid investments. But investors argue that any bubble
is still far off, and they believe that farm acreage will remain a solid
long-term investment so long as the demand for food continues to grow.

It
remains to be seen whether investors will be able to compete with
farmers for the small supply of high-quality cropland available in the
Midwest, says broker Hermreck.

"I
have people call me all the time and I just don't have what they're
looking for," Hermreck said. "Simply supply and demand. It's just not
there. I could sell an awful lot more of this land if it was available.
And people seem to hang on to something that's making some money and
real popular. It's just real popular now to own land."

Abbie
Fentress Swanson reports from Missouri for Harvest Public Media, an
agriculture-reporting project involving six NPR member stations in the
Midwest. For more stories about farm and food, check out harvestpublicmedia.org

October 25, 2012

The game’s true origins, however, go unmentioned in the official literature. Three decades before Darrow’s patent, in 1903, a Maryland actress named Lizzie Magie created a proto-Monopoly as a tool for teaching the philosophy of Henry George, a nineteenth-century writer who had popularized the notion that no single person could claim to “own” land. In his book Progress and Poverty (1879), George called private land ownership an “erroneous and destructive principle” and argued that land should be held in common, with members of society acting collectively as “the general landlord.”

Magie called her invention The Landlord’s Game, and when it was released in 1906 it looked remarkably similar to what we know today as Monopoly. It featured a continuous track along each side of a square board; the track was divided into blocks, each marked with the name of a property, its purchase price, and its rental value. The game was played with dice and scrip cash, and players moved pawns around the track. It had railroads and public utilities — the Soakum Lighting System, the Slambang Trolley — and a “luxury tax” of $75. It also had Chance cards with quotes attributed to Thomas Jefferson (“The earth belongs in usufruct to the living”), John Ruskin (“It begins to be asked on many sides how the possessors of the land became possessed of it”), and Andrew Carnegie (“The greatest astonishment of my life was the discovery that the man who does the work is not the man who gets rich”). The game’s most expensive properties to buy, and those most remunerative to own, were New York City’s Broadway, Fifth Avenue, and Wall Street. In place of Monopoly’s “Go!” was a box marked “Labor Upon Mother Earth Produces Wages.” The Landlord Game’s chief entertainment was the same as in Monopoly: competitors were to be saddled with debt and ultimately reduced to financial ruin, and only one person, the supermonopolist, would stand tall in the end. The players could, however, vote to do something not officially allowed in Monopoly: cooperate. Under this alternative rule set, they would pay land rent not to a property’s title holder but into a common pot—the rent effectively socialized so that, as Magie later wrote, “Prosperity is achieved.”

Readers of this blog know that Lizzie Magie had created her game and started to promote it by the Fall of 1902.

“Monopoly players around the kitchen table”—which is to say, most people—“think the game is all about accumulation,” he said. “You know, making a lot of money. But the real object is to bankrupt your opponents as quickly as possible. To have just enough so that everybody else has nothing.” In this view, Monopoly is not about unleashing creativity and innovation among many competing parties, nor is it about opening markets and expanding trade or creating wealth through hard work and enlightened self-interest, the virtues Adam Smith thought of as the invisible hands that would produce a dynamic and prosperous society. It’s about shutting down the marketplace. All the players have to do is sit on their land and wait for the suckers to roll the dice.

Smith described such monopolist rent-seekers, who in his day were typified by the landed gentry of England, as the great parasites in the capitalist order. They avoided productive labor, innovated nothing, created nothing—the land was already there—and made a great deal of money while bleeding those who had to pay rent. The initial phase of competition in Monopoly, the free-trade phase that happens to be the most exciting part of the game to watch, is really about ending free trade and nixing competition in order to replace it with rent-seeking.

This is a good article, and I commend it in its entirety to your attention. It also provides links to Tom Forsythe's new site, http://landlordsgame.info/, whose graphics show many early versions of the Landlord's Game, which I look forward to exploring. I learned for the first time that the game layout that I had thought was an early one, with a lake in the center, was actually a 1939 version, based on Lizzie Magie's design but published by Parker Brothers. (I ought to have figured that out sooner, since the board includes her married name!)

It is interesting that one of the earlier versions -- 1909 -- was based on Altoona's streets. In the past year, Altoona has shifted to taxing land and not taxing buildings to fund its municipal spending. (This was a gradual shift, accomplished over a number of years; they must have liked the effect!)

October 24, 2012

As I listen to the rhetoric of the presidential and vice-presidential candidates about equal opportunity for women -- seeking equal opportunities for their daughters and granddaughters as for their sons and grandsons -- it occurs to me that they haven't asked that their sons and daughters have opportunities equal to the sons and grandchildren of Mitt Romney, who apparently share a trust fund currently worth over $100 million.* Even divided among 5 sons and 18 grandchildren, that's about $4 million per descendant, enough to throw off $90,000 per person per year without diminishing (and without them working -- or even having finished grade school). And that's before we start to talk about the $100 million IRA they are likely to inherit, which continues to appreciate free of taxes.

The Earth-for-All Calendar contains a number of items which speak to equality of opportunity for all in our current generation, and for all in future generations. When some of us start life with all the advantages, and others, because of the design of our society's systems, have few or no advantages, how do we continue to maintain the fiction that we believe we are all created equal, that our nation is founded on this proposition and its laws and customs said to conform to and support this proposition?

The advantages of our wealthiest didn't come out of thin air. They aren't "no-cost" to the rest of us, and they don't benefit the rest of us by any form of "trickle down." The trickle flows the other direction. To the extent that our society pretends that this comes out of thin air, we are permitting ourselves to be fooled -- treated as fools, taught by rich people's useful idiots.

And when some of us have the money to devote to promoting points of view that benefit ourselves, at the expense of the common good, to influence elections, where does democracy get us?

October 21, 2012

The accompanying map says, "Around Grand Central Terminal, towers could be up to twice the size now permitted. Development could also take place along the Park Avenue corridor, where towers could be more than 40% larger. Elsewhere in the district, towers could be 20% larger."

But
New York’s premier district, the 70-block area around Grand Central
Terminal, has lagged, Bloomberg officials say, hampered by zoning rules,
decades old, that have limited the height of buildings.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg wants
to overhaul these rules so that buildings in Midtown Manhattan can soar
as high as those elsewhere. New towers could eventually cast shadows
over landmarks across the area, including St. Patrick’s Cathedral and
the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. They could rise above the 59-story MetLife
Building and even the 77-story Chrysler Building.

Mr. Bloomberg’s proposal reflects
his effort to put his stamp on the city well after his tenure ends in
December 2013. Moving swiftly, he wants the City Council to adopt the
new zoning, for what is being called Midtown East, by October 2013, with
the first permits for new buildings granted four years later.

His
administration says that without the changes, the neighborhood around
Grand Central will not retain its reputation as “the best business
address in the world” because 300 of its roughly 400 buildings are more
than 50 years old. These structures also lack the large column-free
spaces, tall ceilings and environmental features now sought by corporate
tenants.

The
rezoning — from 39th Street to 57th Street on the East Side — would
make it easier to demolish aging buildings in order to make way for
state of-the-art towers.

Without
it, “the top Class A tenants who have been attracted to the area in the
past would begin to look elsewhere for space,” the administration says
in its proposal.

The
plan has stirred criticism from some urban planners, community boards
and City Council members, who have contended that the mayor has acted
hastily. They said they were concerned about the impact of taller towers
in an already dense district where buildings, public spaces, streets,
sidewalks and subways have long remained unchanged.

Mr. Bloomberg has encouraged high-rise development in industrial neighborhoods, including the Far West Side of Manhattan,
the waterfront in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and in Long Island City,
Queens. But with the proposal for Midtown, which is working its way
through environmental and public reviews, he is tackling the city’s
commercial heart.

“Unlocking
the development potential in this area will generate historic
opportunities for investment in New York City,” Deputy Mayor Robert K.
Steel said.

The initiative would, in some cases, allow developers to build towers twice the size now permitted in the Grand Central area. The
owner of the 19-story Roosevelt Hotel at Madison and 45th Street could
replace it with a 58-story tower under the proposed rules. Current
regulations permit no more than 30 floors.

When zoning changes increase the value of land, who should reap the benefit? The current landholder, or the community? What did the landholder do to earn that windfall? Do you think it comes out of thin air? Do you think it is paid him by other rich people?

Or do you recognize that it is part of the structure which enriches a few and impoverishes the many?

It is easy to fix this one. One just has to recognize the structure, and value the land correctly, and start collecting the lion's share of the land rent for the community. If it is more than NYC can put to use -- and it will be -- then apply the excess to reducing our federal taxes on productive effort. Use it to fund Social Security, or Medicare, or universal health insurance, or something else that will benefit the vast majority of us instead of an undeserving tiny privileged minority. Don't throw it in the ocean, and don't leave it in private pockets, be they American or not.

Collect the land rent. Repeat next year, and the next, and the next. Natural Public Revenue.

Henry George is the most famous American popular economist you've never heard of, a 19th century cross between Michael Lewis, Howard Dean and Ron Paul. Progress and Poverty, George's most important book, sold three million copies and was translated into German, French, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Spanish, Russian, Hungarian, Hebrew and Mandarin. During his lifetime, George was probably the third best-known American, eclipsed only by Thomas Edison and Mark Twain. He was admired by the foreign luminaries of the age, too -- Leo Tolstoy, Sun-Yat Sen and Albert Einstein, who wrote that "men like Henry George are unfortunately rare. One cannot image a more beautiful combination of intellectual keenness, artistic form and fervent love of justice." George Bernard Shaw described his own thinking about the political economy as a continuation of the ideas of George, whom he had once heard deliver a speech.

Later, she writes,

What
George found most mysterious about the economic consequences of the
industrial revolution was that its failure to deliver economic
prosperity was not uniform -- instead it had created a winner-take-all
society: "Some get an infinitely better and easier living, but others
find it hard to get a living at all. The 'tramp' comes with the
locomotives, and almshouses and prisons are as surely the marks of
'material progress' as are costly dwellings, rich warehouses and
magnificent churches. Upon streets lighted with gas and patrolled by
uniformed policeman, beggars wait for the passer-by, and in the shadow
of college, and library, and museum, are gathering the more hideous Huns
and fiercer Vandals of whom Macaulay prophesied."

George's
diagnosis was beguilingly simple -- the fruits of innovation weren't
widely shared because they were going to the landlords. This was a very
American indictment of industrial capitalism: at a time when Marx was
responding to Europe's version of progress and poverty with a wholesale
denunciation of private property, George was an enthusiastic supporter
of industry, free trade and a limited role for government. His culprits
were the rentier rich, the landowners who profited hugely from
industrialization and urbanization, but did not contribute to it.

George
had such tremendous popular appeal because he addressed the obvious
inequity of 19th century American capitalism without disavowing
capitalism itself. George wasn't trying to build a communist utopia. His
campaign promise was to rescue America from the clutches of the robber
barons and to return it to "the democracy of Thomas Jefferson." That
ideal -- as much Tea Party as Occupy Wall Street -- won support not only
among working class voters and their leaders, like Samuel Gompers, but
also resonated with many small businessmen. Robert Ingersoll, a
Republican orator, attorney and intellectual, was a George supporter. He
urged his fellow Republicans to back his man and thereby "show that
their sympathies are not given to bankers, corporations and
millionaires."

I commend the entire post, adapted from Freeland's new book, Plutocrats. It ends with these paragraphs:

"America
today urgently needs a 21st century Henry George -- a thinker who
embraces the wealth-creating power of capitalism, but squarely faces the
inequity of its current manifestation. That kind of thinking is missing
on the right, which is still relying on Reagan-era trickle-down
economics and hopes complaints about income inequality can be silenced
with accusations of class war. But the left isn't doing much better
either, preferring nostalgia for the high-wage, medium-skill
manufacturing jobs of the post-war era and China-bashing to a serious
and original effort to figure out how to make 21st century capitalism
work for the middle class.

Globalization
and the technology revolution aren't going away -- and thank goodness
for that. Industrialization didn't go away either. But between 1886,
when George lost the mayoral race, and the presidency of FDR, American
progressives invented, fought for and implemented a broad range of new
social and political institutions to make capitalism serve the whole of
society -- ranging from trust-busting, to the income tax, to the welfare
state.

We
are living in an era of comparably tumultuous economic change. The
great challenge of our time is to devise the new social and political
institutions we need to make the new economy work for everyone. So far,
that is a historic task neither party is taking on with enough energy,
honesty or originality."

Along the same lines, you might find interesting an earlier post here, an article by Thomas Shearman entitled "Henry George's Mistakes." (He was a co-founder of Shearman & Sterling, and went on to write some excellent articles on plutocracy in The Standard, October, 1887.)

October 13, 2012

Billie: Because when ya steal from the government, you're stealing from yourself, ya dumb ass.

And when we allow others to steal from the commons what rightly belongs to the community, what are we? Some of that theft we all recognize as theft, and other kinds are perfectly legal, even honored, under our current laws. I find the latter even more troubling than the former.

And when neither our economists nor our leaders even SEE it, it is fair to call that a corruption of what their businesses are supposed to be.

October 05, 2012

Equity, therefore, does not permit property in land. For if
one portion of the earth's surface may justly become the
possession of an individual and may be held by him for his sole use
and benefit as a thing to which he has an exclusive right, then
other portions of the earth's surface may be so held; and eventually
the whole of the earth's surface may be so held; and our planet may
thus lapse into private hands.

October 03, 2012

There has been a lot of political rhetoric lately centered around the "Job Creators," and what we can do to encourage them to create jobs (in America). Most of it seems to be centered around (1) creating some sort of "certainty" for them regarding what sorts of taxes they might be expected to pay if the jobs they deign to create are successful in increasing their profits; and (2) lifting the supposedly onerous regulations we put on them regarding product safety, environmental protection, and perhaps royalties on what they withdraw from the earth's supply of non-renewable natural resources and other services they receive from our common ecosystem.

The real job creators are those whose demand for products and services create jobs. A few percent of us have sufficient current income -- or sufficient wealth to draw on -- that it is fair to say that virtually all of their needs and many of their wants are being met. But the vast majority of us have unmet needs and certainly more wants. And I think it is fair to say that while it is human nature to want something for nothing, and that all of us want to meet our needs and wants with the least possible effort, it is also true that virtually all of us are willing to work, to serve others with products and services, in return for wages, be they from a single employer or a collection of customers.

So what's the problem? Why can't this supply of labor get together with this demand for labor, to the general benefit of our entire society?

I can point to several problems.

First, much of the nation's capital is in the portfolios of a very small proportion of our society, and that process of concentration shows no signs of slowing down, much less reversing. (Not surprising, since we've done nothing to correct the structural causes which produce it!) Joe Stiglitz has said that the FIRE sector is harvesting something like 40% of the profits of the productive sectors of the economy. This cannot be permitted to continue if we seek to create prosperity for all.

Second, ownership of America's choicest sites -- mostly in the central business districts of our biggest cities, but also in some of the scenic coastal areas and the suburbs surrounding those cities -- is in the portfolios of a very small proportion of our society (as well as in portfolios of foreign landlords). This may not appear to some to be a problem, but I assert that it is -- and a big one. (The good news is that it is readily fixable.) An acre of Manhattan land can be worth $250 million or more, while an acre of good farm land might be worth $5,000 -- a difference of 50,000 times! That is, 50,000 acres of farmland might be worth the same amount as a single acre of Manhattan land!!) A single 25x100 residential building lot in Manhattan -- 0.058 acre -- can be worth $10 million ... that works out to $172 million per acre.

Third, we tax labor income -- wages -- to fund federal and state spending. We tax the first $105,000 or so of wages at 15% or so to fund Social Security and Medicare (that includes both the employee's and the employer's contribution, as economists agree is appropriate). After exempting some amount of income in proportion to family size ($15,200 for a family of 4) and some additional for a standard deduction ($11,900 for married filing jointly) or some combination of itemized deductions (which go mostly to high-end urban/suburban homeowners in northeastern states, with big mortgages and significant property taxes, and California owners, with big mortgages and more modest property taxes), the Federal Income Tax taxes the next dollar of wages at 10%, and the rate rises to 15%, 25% 28%, and, for a tiny but noisy minority of us (adjusted income over $217,450 after exemptions and deductions, for married filing jointly -- which Romney calls the middle class), to 33% and 35% on the marginal dollars (not on all of one's income). But 86% of us pay more in payroll taxes than we do in federal income taxes, when the employer's portion is taken into account. [source: http://www.cbo.gov/publication/43373, table 8.] It is worth noting that 15% [social insurance] plus 10%, the federal tax rate on the first dollar after deductions and exemptions, is 25%, but that for those whose household income is well above the $105,000 cut-cutoff, the 35% bracket is not all that much higher than what comes out of the pockets of the low-income worker.

So 25% to 35% of the portion of our wages beyond that allowance for some basic expenses, are being taken to fund federal spending, and in most states, more for state spending.

The federal spending, and much of the state spending, goes to projects whose effect is to increase local land values in specific places -- infrastructure, public goods of various kinds. Oddly, we fund it via taxes on wages! Wouldn't we be wiser to fund it via taxes which fall on those land values, which are so concentrated into a relative few pockets -- pockets which are currently not asked to contribute much, but receive so much from those who need to occupy those choice urban sites. I do not begrudge the owner of a luxury building the right to keep the portions of the rent he receives which can be attributed to (a) the qualities of the building itself and (b) the services he as landlord provides, but much of that rent is attributable to neither of those factors; rather, it is a function of .... (all together, now) Location, Location, Location, and value which is created by the community, not by that landlord!

Fourth, most of us of working age, and particularly our young people, are paying at least 30% of our income for housing, and many, many people are paying a far larger portion of their income. On top of that, many have student loans, car loans, and perhaps credit card debt, and live paycheck to paycheck. Many young people who bought a home during the 2002 to 2010 period are upside down on their mortgages, owing the lender more than they could sell the property for, and are thus effectively trapped in those homes until prices rise or someone does something to renegotiate their mortgage, or they win big in the Lottery. Thus they cannot move to meet their families' changing needs, or leave the area to accept a job in another part of the country.

So what does this have to do with Job Creation? Well, if those of us who don't live on the really choice bits of urban or coastal land were relieved of some portion of their tax burden, including the 15% that goes for social insurance, we'd have more to spend on satisfying our other needs and wants, and virtually all of that would create jobs. Here, in the U. S.

October 02, 2012

"The wages problem resolves itself into a very simple question, viz.: Which is the better for a community — to have 10,000,000 men earning $2.50 a day, with hours that enable them to read and rest and pass a fair proportion of their time with their families, and at the same time have no millionaires, or to have those 10,000,000 men working fifteen hours a day at $1.50, and have a few score millionaires?"

The Standardwas devoted to issues like this, and makes excellent reading in this decade and century.

It might be worth noting that in those days when one spoke of a millionaire, the reference was to someone whose assets totalled over $1 million. Today, it is commonly used to refer to someone whose annual income is over $1 million. But you'll notice what workmen's wages were in 1887 -- $1.50 a day is $468 per year*, and likely didn't leave much, if anything, for savings. [6 days a week.]

So which IS better for the community? The families making $1.50 or $2.50 a day are spending nearly every penny of that, just in order to get by. The millionaires can only spend so much on the necessities of daily life, plus some generous amount on luxuries. The rest they will invest, one way or another, and the wise ones, in our current structure, will "invest" in land -- particularly choice urban sites -- and natural resources, since we as a society are so generous about letting the owners of these assets keep most of what those assets earn, despite them having nothing to do with having created those assets, and being in no position to create more in response to demand, which will naturally increase with population!!

THAT is the problem with our current "generosity."

The spending of the 10 million on the necessities of daily life creates jobs for a lot of other people. (The portion that goes to their landlords in payment for the right to occupy bits of urban -- or other -- land, DOESN'T create any jobs; it simply enriches the landlord. I don't begrudge the landlord the portion that relates to the building, or to services he provides, such as, say, a doorman in the city.)

September 30, 2012

Any settlement of the land of a country that would exclude the
humblest man in that country from his share of the common
inheritance would be not only an injustice and a wrong to that man,
but moreover would be an impious resistance to the benevolent
intentions of the Creator.

September 25, 2012

All things spoke peace and plenty and the Prince
Saw and rejoiced. But, looking deep he saw
The thorns which grow upon the rose of life;
How the swart peasant sweated for his wage,
Toiling for leave to live.

September 22, 2012

The plowman plows, the sower sows,
The reaper reaps the ear,
The woodman to the forest goes
Before the day grows clear;
But of our toil no fruit we see,
The harvest's not for you and me;
A robber band has seized the land,
And we are exiles here.

September 20, 2012

See, there they troop from fields and farmyards; they've tilled the
earth and turned it to a smiling garden, and fruits in plenty,
enough for all who live, have paid their pains — yet poor are they
and naked, starving; for not to them, or others who are needy,
belongs earth's blessing, but solely to the rich and mighty one who
calls men and the earth his own.

September 15, 2012

I'm reading through the first issues of Henry George's newspaper, "The Standard," a weekly which was published in NYC beginning in January, 1887. It was started shortly after the mayoral race of 1886 (chronicled in Post & Leubuscher's December, 1886 book), and in the 4th issue there is a very explicit article about the role that Rome was attempting to play in NYC politics by removing from the priesthood an activist priest, the much-loved Dr. Edward McGlynn, of St. Stephen's Church, on 28th Street in Manhattan, the largest parish in the city. (This was before the creation of New York City by combining the five boroughs.)

For over 20 years, McGlynn had been living among New York's poor, hearing the confessions of the poor, and knew how hard their lives were. He knew the situation in Ireland which had brought many of them to the U. S., and when he read Henry George's 1879 book, "Progress and Poverty," he found the cause of their suffering, and saw how to correct the underlying cause of poverty.

The article to which I refer is entitled, "From a Brooklyn Priest"

The Body of the
Catholic Clergy Sympathize With Dr. McGlynn

The Brooklyn Times prints an interesting
interview with “a well known parish priest” of that city. His
name is not given "for obvious reasons,” but those acquainted
with the Catholic clerics of Brooklyn have little difficulty in
attributing it to the most popular and influential of the
Catholic clergy of that city. We make the following extracts:

“The sympathy of the body of the Catholic clergy in New
York and Brooklyn is undoubtedly with Dr. McGlynn. I have talked
with a great many of my brother priests of both cities on the
matter, and almost without exception, they have taken Dr.
McGlynn's side in the controversy, though they would be loth to
do so publicly for manifest reasons. The sentiment of the body
of the Catholic clergy of the two cities is that whatever has
been done in Dr. McGlynn's case has been done by inspiration from this side. Of course the question at issue does
not at all touch matters of faith. It is purely a question of
discipline. The authorities at Rome know little or nothing of
the real state of affairs at this side of the Atlantic except as
they are inspired by the archbishop of the different provinces.
Archbishop Corrigan is in daily communication with Rome by
cable, and the views of the controversy between Dr. McGlynn and
his superior that are entertained at Rome pending the personal
appearance of Dr. McGlynn in the Eternal City, are the views of
the archbishop of New York that are telegraphed and written
there.

“I do not mean to imply that Archbishop Corrigan would
willfully misrepresent the situation here, but I do say that Dr.
McGlynn, with all his experience as a priest in the American
metropolis, with all his practical knowledge of the condition of
the poor and of the working classes in that city, is a better
judge of the political needs of the masses in New York than
Archbishop Corrigan is, who has spent the greater part of his
career as an ecclesiastic in the state of New Jersey; and I hold
that Dr. McGlynn and every other Catholic priest has the right
to take an active part in the politics of the country. To say
that a man of the acknowledged piety and the blameless life of
Dr. McGlynn sympathizes with anything that smacks of communism
or anarchy is the veriest nonsense to anyone who knows him — and
who does not know everything about him today? Dr. McGlynn, as a
priest, knows the awful burdens which the laboring classes of
New York city have to bear through political misrule and the
corrupt combination of capital to oppress them. He knows how
anomalous that condition of things is which allows one man to
accumulate a hundred millions of dollars within 25 years and compels another to work for a dollar a day, nay, while
thousands, anxious for work, are starving for the lack of it.
Hence his support of the candidate of the labor party for mayor.
Dr. McGlynn did not believe that anarchy or communism would
follow in the wake of the election of Henry George to the
mayoralty of New York any more than he believed that Mr. George,
as the chief executive of the municipal government across the
East river could put his land theories into practical operation
in the metropolis. Any possible change in the government of New
York city must be a change for the better, so far as the poor
are concerned.

“If the bishops of the dioceses in the United States
were taken by Rome from among the clergy of these dioceses who
thoroughly understand the social and political conditions of
their people, there would be none of these disciplinary
troubles. What sense is there in sending an Italian priest to
Canada or an Irish priest to Guatemala as bishop? Or why should
a bishop be transferred from a city in the state of New Jersey
to preside over the archdiocese of New York when there are many
able and holy priests in the metropolis worthy of election to
the prelacy who have spent their lives among the masses of the
people? In countries where the canonical law of the church is in
practical application the parish priests of a diocese in which
the bishopric becomes vacant send three names to Rome by majority
vote. One is set down as dignus, or worthy, another as dignior,
or more worthy, and a third as dignissimus, or most worthy. Any
one of the three may be selected, and it sometimes happens that
it is the lowest on the list who is chosen. The pope has the
absolute power to go outside the list sent to him from the
diocese in which a vacancy occurs, but it is a power rarely
exercised and only for the most exigent reasons. If the canon
law applied in America, which is only yet a missionary country
and subject to the propaganda at Rome, Dr. McGlynn could not
have been turned out of St. Stephen's church as he has been and
his salary would have run on despite his suspension until his
case was finally decided at Rome.

“It is most unfortunate that the canon law does not
apply in the United States, and that the political, social and
educational situation in this country is not better understood
at Rome. Wealthy Catholic politicians have too much to say on
church policy in this country; and unfortunately that is today
the trouble in New York city. The masses of the Catholic clergy
say, 'Hands off.' As long as bishops, with whom wealthy
politicians are most powerful, practically say who shall be
elected to the prelacy in the United States there will be a
chance for trouble among the laity.

“I am satisfied that if a majority of the Catholic
clergy of the dioceses of New York and Long Island could do it
Dr. McGlynn would have been elected archbishop and Archbishop
Corrigan would have been allowed to remain in New Jersey. I
unhesitatingly say that if the votes of the Catholic clergy in
these two dioceses could do it Dr. McGlynn would be restored to
St. Stephen's parish tomorrow. No old priest of New York city
wanted to succeed Dr. McGlynn in that parish, for they all knew
how his congregation idolized him. I am also free to say that if
Archbishop Corrigan had not been brought from the state of New
Jersey to New York city this trouble would never have occurred.

“Mgr. Preston is the bitterest foe that Dr. McGlynn has
in the diocese of New York. I do not mean to imply that the
monsignor entertains personal animosity toward the ex-rector of
St. Stephen's church, but he is utterly opposed to what Dr.
McGlynn stands for as an American citizen. Mgr. Preston is an
aristocrat and the associate of aristocrats. Even converts to
the Catholic church who know Father Preston well have admitted
that the monsignor dearly loves the privileges which attach to
church dignitaries in Catholic countries, and is inclined to ape
the civil ceremonial of such communities in his intercourse with
his flock. Dr. McGlynn is poor, is of the poor and loves to
associate with the poor. He is in this respect the antithesis
of Mgr. Preston, and the latter is a confidential adviser of
Archbishop Corrigan.”

This article, more than anything else I've read, brings home to me the extent to which the rich manage even the Church for the benefit of the rich, to the detriment of the poor. When a priest who seeks to correct the unjust structures is deprived of his priesthood because he might upset the privileges of the rich, the country and the church are both in trouble.

When churches benefit from contributions from wealthy contributors, they will tend to act to enforce the structures which enrich those wealthy contributors, rather than rocking the boat in any way. When economic structures funnel the community's wealth into a relative few pockets, the Church will tend to embrace those pockets, not challenge the structures. Money in elections is not the only corrupting force.

September 12, 2012

"But how is it that you allow these chiefs — landlords, don't you call them? — to taboo the
soil, and prevent you all from even walking on it? Don't you see
that if you choose to combine in a body, and insist upon the
recognition of your natural rights — if you determined to make the landlords give up
their taboo, and cease from injustice, they'd have to yield to you?
And then you could exercise your natural right of going where you
pleased, and cultivate the land in common for the public benefit,
instead of leaving it as now, to be cultivated anyhow, or turned
into waste, for the benefit of the tabooers?"

September 04, 2012

The post below this one, "Mitt Romney's 'Fair Share' " refers to his fair share of the costs of providing public goods.

But perhaps an equally important question is the nature of one's fair share of the output of our economy and the output of the earth. Some of the former output is the result of individual efforts, and one ought to be able to keep that portion. But at the same time we must recognize how much comes from the division of labor, from drawing down on the non-infinite supply of non-renewable natural resources on which all of us today must depend and on which future generations of human beings must rely. Those who draw down more than their legitimate share owe something to the rest of the community. Our wealthiest tend, we suspect, to use many, many times their legitimate share, and the median American likely draws far more than their share, when one considers the planet as a whole.

Perhaps "legitimate" is not the right word here. It refers to what is permissible under current law. (The word gets misused a lot -- see the discussion on "legitimate rape," which seemed to be about the circumstances under which a woman has a right to make a specific very personal, decision, and when it is considered by some to not be left to her and is the province of government, legislators or others.)

What is one's "fair share" of natural resources? America is using a hugely disproportionate share of the world's resources. Are we entitled to it because we're somehow "exceptional"? Because "our" God is somehow better than other nation's Gods? Or do we genuinely believe that all people are created equal, and intend to live our lives accordingly?

Our output of greenhouse gases exceeds our share of the world's population. This is not without consequences for the world, and for peace on earth.

We ought to be re-examining our incentives so that they move us in the direction we ought to be going, which is, to my mind, using less. We can build transportation infrastructure which will permit many more of us to move around with less impact on the environment. We can fund that through collecting the increases in land value that infrastructure creates. We can correct the incentives which cause us to use today's inferior technologies to extract natural resources from the earth in ways which damage the environment, as if ours was the final generation, or the only one worth serious consideration.

Better incentives could reduce, eliminate, even reverse urban sprawl. I refer specifically to land value taxation as a replacement for the existing property tax, particularly in places where assessments are for one reason or another not consistent with current property values -- e.g., California and Florida, parts of Delaware and Pennsylvania which currently use assessments from the 1970s, and many other places where assessments are simply out of whack with current reality!) We should be replacing sales taxes, wage taxes, building taxes with taxes on land value and on natural resources. Most of that value is flowing generously into private or corporate pockets, to our detriment. It concentrates wealth, income, and, of course, political power.

Collecting the rent, instead of leaving the lion's share of it to be pocketed by the rent-seekers, would go a long way to making our society and our economy healthier. Eliminating the privilege of privatizing that which in a wisely designed society would be our common treasure would make our society a better place in which to live, a place in which all could thrive and prosper without victimizing their fellow human beings.

A major theme of the underlying political debate in the United States is the role of the state and the need for collective action. The private sector, while central in a modern economy, cannot ensure its success alone. For example, the financial crisis that began in 2008 demonstrated the need for adequate regulation.

Moreover, beyond effective regulation (including ensuring a level playing field for competition), modern economies are founded on technological innovation, which in turn presupposes basic research funded by government. This is an example of a public good – things from which we all benefit, but that would be undersupplied (or not supplied at all) were we to rely on the private sector.

Conservative politicians in the US underestimate the importance of publicly provided education, technology, and infrastructure. Economies in which government provides these public goods perform far better than those in which it does not.

But public goods must be paid for, and it is imperative that everyone pays their fair share. While there may be disagreement about what that entails, those at the top of the income distribution who pay 15% of their reported income (money accruing in tax shelters in the Cayman Islands and other tax havens may not be reported to US authorities) clearly are not paying their fair share. ...

I have to disagree with the second sentence of this next paragraph. And I think Stiglitz knows better, if he stops to think about it:

Democracies rely on a spirit of trust and cooperation in paying taxes. If every individual devoted as much energy and resources as the rich do to avoiding their fair share of taxes, the tax system either would collapse, or would have to be replaced by a far more intrusive and coercive scheme. Both alternatives are unacceptable.

We don't need intrusive or coercive; we just need to start collecting the lion's share of the rent! Well, I suppose some rent-seekers would find this extremely intrusive -- it intrudes on their habit of self-enrichment by privatizing of what is rightly and logically our PUBLIC treasure, the logical way of financing PUBLIC goods. And Professor Stiglitz is quite aware of the value of natural resources; he may not be quite as conscious of the value of urban and other well-situated land.

Our national recordkeeping doesn't even collect the valuations of land and natural resources on any consistent basis! (One could reasonably argue that this failure-to-measure is a form of corruption!) What we don't measure we can't do anything about. And the powers that be are quite content with how we do things; the benefits accrue to them! And several generations of college-educated people know nothing about the issue, which was well known and widely discussed 100 years ago. (Look into the extensive Single Tax literature and the ideas of Henry George.)

Some more excerpts:

The billionaire investor Warren Buffett argues that he should pay only the taxes that he must, but that there is something fundamentally wrong with a system that taxes his income at a lower rate than his secretary is required to pay. He is right. Romney might be forgiven were he to take a similar position. Indeed, it might be a Nixon-in-China moment: a wealthy politician at the pinnacle of power advocating higher taxes for the rich could change the course of history.

But Romney has not chosen to do so. He evidently does not recognize that a system that taxes speculation at a lower rate than hard work distorts the economy. Indeed, much of the money that accrues to those at the top is what economists call rents, which arise not from increasing the size of the economic pie, but from grabbing a larger slice of the existing pie.

Those at the top include a disproportionate number of monopolists who increase their income by restricting production and engaging in anti-competitive practices; CEOs who exploit deficiencies in corporate-governance laws to grab a larger share of corporate revenues for themselves (leaving less for workers); and bankers who have engaged in predatory lending and abusive credit-card practices (often targeting poor and middle-class households). It is perhaps no accident that rent-seeking and inequality have increased as top tax rates have fallen, regulations have been eviscerated, and enforcement of existing rules has been weakened: the opportunity and returns from rent-seeking have increased.

Today, a deficiency of aggregate demand afflicts almost all advanced countries, leading to high unemployment, lower wages, greater inequality, and – coming full, vicious circle – constrained consumption. There is now a growing recognition of the link between inequality and economic instability and weakness.

There is another vicious circle: Economic inequality translates into political inequality, which in turn reinforces the former, including through a tax system that allows people like Romney – who insists that he has been subject to an income-tax rate of “at least 13%” for the last ten years – not to pay their fair share. The resulting economic inequality – a result of politics as much as market forces – contributes to today’s overall economic weakness.

August 22, 2012

As I listen to the 2012 party platforms, I am reminded of what they ought to be focused on, embodied pretty well in this platform from 1886-87.

PLATFORM OF THE UNITED PARTY.
Adopted at Syracuse August 19, 1887.

We, the delegates of the united labor party of New York, in state
convention assembled, hereby reassert, as the fundamental platform of
the party, and the basis on which we ask the co-operation of citizens of
other states, the following declaration or principles adopted on
September 23, 1886, by the convention of trade and labor associations of
the city of New York, that resulted in the formation of the united
labor party.

"Holding that the corruptions of government and the impoverishment of
labor result from neglect of the self-evident truths proclaimed by the
founders of this republic that all men are created equal and are endowed
by their Creator with unalienable rights, we aim at the abolition of a
system which compels men to pay their fellow creatures for the use of
God’s gifts to all, and permits monopolizers to deprive labor of natural
opportunities for employment, thus filling the land with tramps and
paupers and bringing about an unnatural competition which tends to
reduce wages to starvation rates and to make the wealth producer the
industrial slave of those who grow rich by his toil.

'“Holding, moreover, that the advantages arising from social growth and
improvement belong to society at large, we aim at the abolition of the
system which makes such beneficent inventions as the railroad and
telegraph a means for the oppression of the people and the
aggrandizement of an aristocracy of wealth and power. We declare the
true purpose of government to be the maintenance of that sacred right of
property which gives to every one opportunity to employ his labor, and
security that he shall enjoy its fruits; to prevent the strong from
oppressing the weak, and the unscrupulous from robbing the honest; and
to do for the equal benefit of all such things as can be better done by
organized society than by individuals; and we aim at the abolition of
all laws which give to any class of citizens advantages, either
judicial, financial, industrial or political, that are not equally
shared by all others."

We call upon all who seek the emancipation of labor, and who would make
the American union and its component states democratic commonwealths of
really free and independent citizens, to ignore all minor differences
and join with us in organizing a great national party on this broad
platform of natural rights and equal justice. We do not aim at securing
any forced equality in the distribution of wealth. We do not propose
that the state shall attempt to control production, conduct
distribution, or in any wise interfere with the freedom of the
individual to use his labor or capital in any way that may seem proper
to him and that will not interfere with the equal rights of others. Nor
do we propose that the state shall take possession of land and either
work it or rent it out. What we propose is not the disturbing of any man
in his holding or title, but by abolishing all taxes on industry or its
products, to leave to the producer the full fruits of his exertion and
by the taxation of land values, exclusive or improvements, to devote to
the common use and benefit those values, which, arising not from the
exertion of the individual, but from the growth of society, belong
justly to the community as a whole. This increased taxation of land, not
according to its area, but according to its value, must, while
relieving the working farmer and small homestead owner of the undue
burdens now imposed upon them, make it unprofitable to hold land for
speculation, and thus throw open abundant opportunities for the
employment of labor and the building up of homes.

While thus simplifying government by doing away with the horde of
officials required by the present system of taxation and with its
incentives to fraud and corruption, we would further promote the common
weal and further secure the equal rights of all, by placing under public
control such agencies as are in their nature monopolies: We would have
our municipalities supply their inhabitants with water, light and heat;
we would have the general government issue all money, without the
intervention of banks; we would add a postal telegraph system and postal
savings banks to the postal service, and would assume public control
and ownership of those iron roads which have become the highways of
modern commerce.

While declaring the foregoing to be the fundamental principles and aims
of the united labor party, and while conscious that no reform can give
effectual and permanent relief to labor that does not involve the legal
recognition of equal rights, to natural opportunities, we nevertheless,
as measures of relief from some of the evil effects of ignoring those
rights, favor such legislation as may tend to reduce the hours of labor,
to prevent the employment of children of tender years, to avoid the
competition of convict labor with honest industry, to secure the
sanitary inspection of tenements, factories and mines, and to put an end
to the abuse of conspiracy laws.

We desire also to so simplify the procedure of our courts and diminish
the expense of legal proceedings, that the poor may be placed on an
equality with the rich and the long delays winch now result in
scandalous miscarriages of justice may be prevented.

And since the ballot is the only means by which in our Republic the
redress of political and social grievances is to besought, we especially
and emphatically declare for the adoption of what is known as the
“Australian system of voting,” an order that the effectual secrecy of
the ballot and the relief of candidates for public office from the heavy
expenses now imposed upon them, may prevent bribery and intimidation,
do away with practical discriminations in favor of the rich and
unscrupulous, and lessen the pernicious influence of money in politics.

In support or these aims we solicit the co-operation of all patriotic
citizens who, sick of the degradation of politics, desire by
constitutional methods to establish justice, to preserve liberty, to
extend the spirit of fraternity, and to elevate humanity.

August 13, 2012

Then he says: "If I am born into the earth, where is my part? Have the goodness, gentlemen of this world, to show me my wood lot, where I may fell my wood, my field where to plant my corn, my pleasant ground where to build my cabin."

"Touch any wood or field or house-lot on your peril," cry all the gentlemen of this world; "but you may come and work in ours for us, and we will give you a piece of bread."

August 07, 2012

I can easily imagine a great proprietor of ground rents in the metropolis calling attention to the habitations of the poor, to the evils of overcrowding, and to the scandals which the inquiry reveals, while his own income is greatly increased by the causes which make house-rent dear in London, and decent lodging hardly obtainable by thousands of laborers.

August 04, 2012

The wood of the forest, the grass of the field, and all the natural fruits of the earth, which when land was in common, cost the laborer only the trouble of gathering them, come, even to him, to have an additional price fixed upon them. He must then pay for the license to gather them, and must give up to the landlord a portion of what his labor either collects or produces. This portion, or what comes to the same thing, the price of this portion, constitutes the rent of the land.

August 02, 2012

If this land (i.e., "land available for building in the neighborhood of our populous cities"), were rated at, say, 4% on its selling value, . . . the owners of the building land would be forced to offer their land for sale, and thus their competition with one another would bring down the price of building land, and so diminish the tax in the shape of ground-rent or price paid for land, which is now levied on urban enterprise by the adjacent land-owners, a tax, be it remembered, which is no recompense for any industry or expenditure on their part, but is the natural result of the industry and activity of the townspeople themselves.

— First Report of the Royal Commission on the Housing of the Working Classes (1885), p. 42.

June 27, 2012

Dr. John Haynes Holmes Says Bosses Have No Right to Stop the Expression of the People's Will

Petitions asking for a referendum vote upon the question of reducing gradually the tax rate upon buildings in New York to one-half the tax rate upon land, through five consecutive reductions in as many years, were signed yesterday by several thousand persons at a mass-meeting held in Union Square under the auspices of the New York Congestion Committee. The meeting was announced as a public protest for lower rents.

Benjamin Clark Marsh, Executive Secretary of the Committee on Congestion of Population in New York, was Chairman. Dr. John Haynes Holmes of the Church of the Messiah said that the Legislature "in the wisdom of the Big Sachem at Fourteenth Street has decreed that the people are not fit to register their judgment as to this bill. I, for one, desire to protest against the boss or set of bosses who presume to forbid the people to express their will on any question."

Frederick Leubuscher, representing the New York State League of Savings and Loan Association, said:

"It was admitted by some of the land speculators at the hearing of the Lower Rents bill at Albany that they were unable to answer our arguments. Nevertheless, a Democratic majority stifled the bill. As a savings and loan association man, I am interested particularly in the enactment of this proposed law. The stimulation of the erection of buildings and the making of improvements generally will be more market in the suburbs, where modest homes, costing from $2,000 to $5,000 to erect, are most in demand."

The purpose of the law was explained in a letter from Assemblyman Michael Schaap, who introduced the Salant-Schaap bill in the lower House of the State Legislature.

"If the tax rate on buildings had been half that on land this year," he wrote, "the rents of the average tenant would have been at least one month's rent less than it was; owners of small houses would have paid $15 to $25 less taxes than they do, and there would be fewer than 9,000 evictions for non-payment of rent.

"The taxes on all adequately improved property would have been reduced and the city would have recovered almost $20,000,000 more of ground rent which now goes to a few people of New York and to absentee landlords. This ground rent at 6% is over $273,000,000. The people of the city have created and maintain these values, but they get less than $84,000,000 of it -- the land owners get the other $189,000,000. Rent and taxes on homes and other buildings would have been reduced by at least $20,000,000."

The Rev. Alexander Irvine said that one family out of every 150 in New York City was evicted for non-payment of rent, because of the unjust taxation of improved property as contrasted with vacant land. Only 3% of the residents of the city own land, the speaker asserted.

John J. Hopper, Chairman of the New York State Independence League, said:

"A tax upon anything tends to lessen the supply of that commodity. By the same principle a tax upon buildings tends to lessen their number. A bill tending to reduce the tax upon buildings will bring about the construction of more buildings, and as a result there will be more competition and a corresponding reduction in rents.

"The Legislature refused to let us decide this question for ourselves, asserting that we did not know enough to vote on the subject of taxation. When we realize that for the expenses of the National Government each one of us pays $7.50 a year; for the state expenses, $5.50 and for the city expenses $38.50, making a total of $51.50 per individual, or $255 for a family of five, then we understand that we must think upon this subject of taxation.

Frederick C. Howe, Director of the People's Institute, said:

"Think of the stupidity of New York citizens. We talk about bankruptcy and lack of city credit and yet we give away each year at least $100,000,000 in the speculative increase of land values which the growth of the community creates. That is, the increase show by the tax valuation of the city. New York could pay a large part of its present budget out of the land speculation profits alone, if it taxed land and exempted buildings."

C. N. Sheehan of the Twenty-eighth Assembly District Board of Trade, Brooklyn, and J. P. Coughlin of the Central Labor Union of Brooklyn also spoke.

June 16, 2012

Dewey Beach — The Town of Dewey Beach [Delaware] is marching to the beat of its own drum: Town officials have imposed a fee of $109 to all bands that play in town. No other town in the Cape Region imposes such a law. “This is just a matter of fairness,” said Mayor Diane Hanson....Hanson said if her cleaning lady has to buy a business license, it is fair to require bands to buy one as well.

Dewey Beach, Delaware, prides itself on not having a property tax. This forces it to rely on taxes which are far less just and less logical than a simple tax on land value would be -- including a licensing fee for anyone who works in Dewey Beach!

And if one lets one's license skip a year, and then needs it again, one must pay for the year one didn't have a customer there, as well as the years in which one does.

Why? Well, perhaps the explanation is partially related to the fact that one company owns an amazing amount of the land in Dewey Beach, and it is rented out on ground leases which are currently at a very low level -- say, $550 to $650 per year -- and whose end comes in about 11 to 14 years. Many of these lots sell for $600,000 or more, when one comes on the market; those in the ocean block perhaps significantly more. The County last assessed the land in the late 1960s. County taxes on the cottages (excluding the land), which typically sell for $200,000 or less because they are aging and must be removed at the end of the lease, run from $300 to $900 a year (and the county tax is mostly for the school district). In neighboring Rehoboth Beach, city taxes typically run about 1/4 of county taxes, though the relationship is not constant because one relies on a 1960s assessment, the other on a 1970s one!!

Dewey Beach collects something each year from property owners to restore the beaches, in case there is erosion that the federal government or state government won't pay to correct, but the beaches were renourished this past winter, at no expense to the property owners. According to an article from a week or two ago, the tax is $0.40 per $100 of assessed value. That article says, "A property in Dewey Beach with an assessed value of $200,000 would pay a total of $240 each year in taxes – $80 for beach replenishment and $160 for capital improvements." But it doesn't seem to realize that the only homes with assessed values of $200,000 are valued by their sellers at over $6 million! $80 is trivial to the owner of those $6 million oceanfront homes.

But to the typical worker in Dewey Beach, the $109 annual license to work within the borders is not so trivial.

Does it make sense to tax workers? Or is there a better tax base than productive activity? What taxes work best? Which taxes do the least damage?

Is working a privilege, or a right? I understand licensing doctors, nurses, lawyers and the like; I don't understand licensing singers, painters, waiters, and other workers.

The following list comprises the most commonly asked questions about the concept of making land and resource rentals the source of revenue for government. As you continue this study, you will see the value from giving resources the respect they deserve and the benefits resulting from the freeing of labour, production and exchange from taxation. If you have any questions which are not covered here, or observations you would like to put to our panel, please feel free to do so by sending your question as an e-mail query and we will attempt to respond.

The inclusion of land and resources in the economic equation is central to any solution for revenue raising. A taxation solution which does not consider the nature of taxation itself and allows the continuing private monopolisation of community land and resources fails to recognise the essential role land plays in the economic equation and will not work. Land is the only element in the economic equation which is both fixed and finite. It can be monopolised. It is a unique class of asset which must be treated accordingly. If we were to wrest not the land itself, but its unimproved value from private monopolies and return the value to the community — whose very presence creates it — then we would have reduced many problems in one stroke with great benefit to production, to the environment and to the cause of individual freedom and justice.

On the subject of land and resource rents, Henry George said this:

The tax upon land values is the most just and equal of all taxes. It falls upon those who receive from society a peculiar and valuable benefit, and upon them in proportion to the benefit they receive. It is the taking by the community, for the use of the community, of that value which is the creation of the community. It is the application of the common property to common uses. When all rent is taken by taxation for the needs of the community, then will the equality ordained by nature be attained.

May 27, 2012

This item, from a Canadian library, seems to me to be a good short statement of the reform many of us seek; I particularly like the next-to-last paragraph.

1899 ADDRESS TO THE CHURCHES FROM THE FOLLOWING ORGANIZATIONS:

The Single Tax Association, The Trades and Labor Council, The Allied Printing Trades Council, The International Builders' Laborers' Union, The International Association of Machinists, The Toronto Typographical Union, The Toronto Street Railway Employees' Union and Benefit Society.

THE circumstances of the last few years have revealed a most serious condition in the social arrangements of this Continent. With an immeasurable endowment of natural wealth, with the improvement of machinery beyond all parallel, with the means of transportation perfected as never before, with the power of producing wealth in abundance vastly greater than in any other age, we still see the terrible sight of ghastly poverty, of oppressive want, of enforced idleness, and all this in the shadow of palaces with all the outward and visible signs of inordinate luxury.

Is it not true that the larger the city the more evident is the widening of the gulf between the haunts of poverty and the palaces of the millionaires? Is it not manifestly evident that somehow and somewhere in our social arrangements there is an unfortunate want of equity, a terrible miscarriage of justice? When some must toil like slaves and then secure only a fractional part of what they produce, and when others without doing the slightest productive act, can enjoy an abundance of superfluous luxuries, when with the most ample natural opportunities for employment, thousands find it so difficult to secure employment, how can the industrial classes be convinced that equity reigns and justice triumphs?

We trust you will pardon us for submitting to you the following enquiries: —

For whom did the Creator furnish this vast storehouse of natural wealth? What are we to understand by the terms "God the Father, maker of heaven and earth" and the terms "Dearly beloved brethren"? Are we to understand that he is the universal father and that every child of every generation can come to him with the same filial reverence and say, "My Father, am not I thy child, an heir of thy bounties?" Do you ask us to accept this doctrine of Fatherhood and Brotherhood, this doctrine of equal heirship for all, or are we to understand that herein is a serious mistake, that we are not all equally the heirs to his gifts, but that the bounties of the Creator were a special gift to one portion of humanity, to them and their heirs, "to have and to hold forever?" Are we to regard it as in accordance with equity, that one part of humanity may claim for themselves the power to exclude us from these bounties, and to demand from us an endless tribute for occupying the surface of the planet, so that no matter how abundant may be our productions, we must for ever surrender that abundance for the opportunity of getting access to the common heritage furnished by the Creator?

When the farmer produces food and the clothier produces clothing, and they exchange, we can at once recognize the equity and justice of the transaction. In this transaction we see the fulfilment of the Golden Rule, to do unto others as we would have others do unto us. This is service for service, burden for burden, sacrifice for sacrifice, enrichment for enrichment, and its equity is at once most clearly apparent. There is no difficulty in seeing the justice of the transaction that leaves both parties benefited by a mutual enrichment and we can at once recognize the brotherhood in the injunction: "Bear ye one another's burdens and thus fulfil the law of Christ."

Nor is there any difficulty in understanding that when men have raised crops, built houses, fabricated goods, when they have changed scarcity into abundance, then they have established an unquestionable right to claim abundance.

We ask you now to look at a marked contrast to these examples. The growth of population on this continent is proceeding with very great rapidity, especially in the cities, many of which double their population every ten years. With this increase of population there must necessarily come relative scarcity of land. While, therefore, industry is ever striving to produce abundance of commodities, increased population is necessarily making land more scarce. Now we would like to know by what principle of justice should we, who beget the abundance, have to surrender that abundance and thus have left for ourselves only scarcity, while speculators and other holders of land, claim the abundance that we have produced because land has become scarce?

Is there not something monstrously unjust, awfully inequitable in this arrangement? With every increase in population, with every public improvement, the land holder can claim from us more and more. As the years go by his claim may increase ten fold, twenty fold, fifty fold, a hundred fold or a thousand fold. Is this because he has increased the productiveness of his energies, and the abundance of his industry? Is it because of his industry that the harvest waves, that dwellings increase, that railroads develop? Not at all, but the very reverse. Does he give abundance for abundance, benefit for benefit? Not at all, but the very reverse. It is out of the abundance of our products that he is licensed by law to appropriate that abundance and to leave us but a meagre relict of penury. The transaction is not enrichment for enrichment, but while we enrich, the land holder impoverishes.

Could there be anything more contrary to the spirit of true religion than this method by which, as fast as one party does the enriching, another party appropriates the riches, leaving the producers in poverty?

The producers of abundance despoiled and left with scarcity; others allowed to appropriate the abundance because land becomes scarce; and by our present arrangements this may continue to the end of time, the obligation of the industrious classes ever increasing, thus insuring their endless impoverishment, the power of the land owner to appropriate the products of industry ever increasing, thus insuring the widening of the gulf between leisured affluence and overworked poverty. Can we be convinced that this is the fruits of righteousness and of that "love which rejoices not in iniquity"?

We have no difficulty in understanding why we should pay the farmer who feeds us, the tailor who clothes us, the teacher who instructs us, and any one who produces for us, or renders us a service; but we cannot possibly understand why we should have to pay any man for access to the land, the forest, the minerals or the other things that man never furnished, any more than we should have to pay him for the sunlight, the air or any other gift of the Creator, and it is equally difficult to understand why we should have to pay an increasing amount of our productions to land holders because the increase of population makes land more scarce. Is not the whole system of land speculation an attempt to secure the products of industry by the impoverishment of the producers; how can it succeed except by the spoliation and degradation of industry? Is it not a wrong that should receive the most emphatic condemnation of the whole church?

You urge us, you plead with us, you beseech us to come and unite with you and to yield ourselves to the claims of religion. But what kind of religion do you ask us to adopt? A religion that rejoices in equity, that loves justice and hates iniquity; or a religion that looks on the spoliation of labor, if not with complacency at any rate too often in silent tolerance or even acquiescence? A religion that recognizes every child of God as equally the heir of God, the heir to the bounties of the All-Father-Creator, or a religion that ignores the fact that the earth with all its potentialities is the gift of God to his children? A religion that seeks to secare all the benefits and rewards of an advancing civilization to those who bear the burden of begetting and supporting that civilization, or a religion that secures the benefits of civilization to the full and overflowing to those, who not merely contribute nothing whatever to its maintenance, but who by their mischievous dog-in-the-manger speculations, often stand in the way of its progress? A religion that demands obedience before sacrifice, or a religion that substitutes charity for justice and cast-off clothing for the principles of righteousness!

Is it not vain to expect men to join with enthusiastic devotion in the propagation of a professed religion that unfortunately ignores the highest claims of religion, that repeats, "Our Father who art in heaven," but ignores the fatherhood on earth, that initiates its service with "Dearly beloved brethren," and then splits society into lordlings and serfs, that enjoins honesty and then fosters and rewards despoiling speculations, that with the lips extols peace and unity, love and justice, but, alas! alas! maintains in operation lorces that beget hostility and discord, strikes and lockouts, riots and labor wars?

The universal and unvarying testimony of the ages endorses the truth, "As ye sow, so shall ye also reap." To sow the seeds of injustice and to expect the fruits of righteousness, to plant the apples of discord and then to look for the fruits of peace, is to look for limpid purity in the stream, while maintaining putrescent corruption in the fountain, it is to look for grapes from thorns and figs from thistles.

With all respect we submit to you these thoughts as transcendantly the most important to which we could call your attention.